Chapter 4: The Delivery

I delivered Arthur the next morning at the hospital, my husband at my side. As we went into the operating room in the hospital’s main ER, not the one for routine deliveries on the Labor & Delivery floor, I felt my legs shaking and teeth chattering uncontrollably.?

Scared to death that I may not even make it through the delivery, I looked up to the group of people, the providers, standing around me: a fierce group of multicultural women all seemed to have an aura of light and healing surrounding them.

I tried to breathe and reassure myself.

The shaking percussion of my legs reverberated throughout the metal table where I sat while the anesthesia team worked on my epidural. My doctor, a mom herself, looked into my eyes, kissed me on my forehead and soothed me like I was her own daughter.?

I was so overwhelmed with fear and despair and neglect and love.?

The drugs soon gave way to rest, and soon thereafter, my delicious son Arthur arrived in my arms, only 5 lbs, just like my daughter had been: perfect, even without the requisite final month in utero.

Intermittently spaced, throughout the joy and terror of his arrival, I saw my cancer’s markers everywhere.?

In the Oncologists in my recovery room when the only other physicians on the floor were OB/GYNs.?

In the nurses who fed my son on his second day while I was still radioactive following the PET CT.

In my new, freckle-like not-quite tattoos, not-quite ink blots on my deeply Jewish person designed for radiation precision.?

While we sat in downtown traffic almost missing Arthur’s bris, having just left a second opinion to discuss a clinical trial.?

Even in the cabbage leaves I sent out for, to dry up my milk supply, instead of asking for tea for production.

A dear friend, also an Oncologist at a world-renowned research hospital, told me to trust my instinct when selecting my Oncology care team. She said, “you’re selecting from the best doctors in the world, go with your gut.”

My gut.?

My source of feeling.?

Where the feeling of feeling lives most pronounced.?

I could trust my gut to make a decision about cancer treatment, about which I’d previously known nothing. “OK, sure,” I thought, “I have a pretty good track record of making good decisions.”?

My doctors were excellent, my choice of care, led by two strong Black women whose eyes and words told me they’ve fought plenty of fights in their lifetimes and now they would fight my battle with me.?

I entered treatment at the end of January and surprisingly, or perhaps not, I started to feel better. The treatment was rigorous and thereby familiar in bizarre, unpredictable ways.?

Deep exhale.